‘Never Again,’ but How to Stop Atrocities? : Balkans: Bosnia bloodletting brings back ugly memories for Holocaust survivors. Groping for a solution, they say world must act.

“The most painful feeling for those of us who were caught was the feeling that we were isolated, we were abandoned and, frankly, that nobody gave a damn,” said Miles Lerman, recalling the time, more than 50 years ago, when he was a 22-year-old prisoner in a Nazi labor camp in Poland.

Now the ethnic slaughter in the ruins of Yugoslavia has brought back vivid memories.

“Morality dictates to us that when we see crimes committed against innocent people, we must be the first ones to speak out and condemn such atrocities,” said Lerman, who now lives in Washington. “We are guided by our memories, and our memories tell us that when we were the victims of Nazi Germany, we stood all alone and no one was willing to speak out on our behalf.”

For the last half-century, much of the world’s Jewish community has comforted itself with the belief that Nazi Germany’s attempt to exterminate an entire people could never be repeated.

But now, the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia-Herzegovina has shaken that conviction. Although the scale is far smaller this time, there are haunting similarities between atrocities in the former Yugoslav federation and the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews and millions of others were murdered.

Since the Yugoslav federation broke up last year, Serbian irregulars have carved out “ethnically pure” Serbian enclaves in both Croatia and Bosnia, killing at least 150,000 Croats and Bosnian Muslims and driving thousands more from their homes, some of them to harsh confinement in concentration camps.

The U.S. State Department has documented thousands of atrocities, most of them committed by Serbian forces but some by both Croats and Muslims.

American Jews, especially some who experienced the Holocaust firsthand, are taking the lead in trying to rally the U.S. government and the world to do something to stop what they see as a developing genocide. But, some complain, they are meeting the same constraints that blunted world reaction to Nazi atrocities.

“Our response is so much more intense,” said Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who was hidden as a child from Nazi troops in occupied Poland ‘Never again’ does not apply only to Jews. ‘Never again’ is a vow that we have taken that we would never permit the atrocities and the horrors to be repeated against anybody. We have a special responsibility and a special obligation.”

But, Foxman admitted, it is one thing to demand that something be done and another to prescribe the precise remedy. So far, there is very little support in the Jewish community or in the country at large to commit the massive numbers of U.S. ground troops that appear to be the only way to stop the murder, torture and rape that mark “ethnic cleansing.”

During World War II, the United States and its allies agreed to a strategy that focused on winning the war as quickly and efficiently as possible, leaving for later any concern about stopping the extermination of the Jews. As a result, the Allies rejected appeals from Jewish organizations to bomb the railroads leading to the concentration camps.

For decades, some Jewish groups have denounced that decision as callous and foolish. But today, many Jews acknowledge that there are no simple answers to the carnage in Bosnia.

Emmy Kolodny, whose father died at Auschwitz and who spent the first years of her life being hidden from the Nazis in Poland, says that the memories of long ago seem to demand action.

“But every time I say I want to do something, the question is, What do you want to do?” said Kolodny, now a resident of Columbia, Md. “And I have no answer. How do you stop the killing?”

Si Frumkin, once a prisoner at Dachau, said there are lots of things the United States could do without sending in the Marines.

“There could at least be some definite steps to designate the perpetrators as war criminals and tell them that they will be hanged if they keep up,” said Frumkin, chairman of the Southern California Committee for Soviet Jewry. “This would concentrate their minds. Declare (Serbian President Slobodan) Milosevic a war criminal and put a $1-million price on his head, live or dead. He wouldn’t live for another 24 hours.”

Simon Wiesenthal, the world-renowned Nazi hunter, recently urged President-elect Bill Clinton to make Bosnia a priority. He said that the United States should either organize an international military coalition to end the aggression or liberalize its immigration laws to accept large numbers of refugees from the fighting.

“I remember the many lonely nights in the concentration camps wondering: ‘Is there anyone out there that knows, that cares? Is there anyone out there prepared to do something?’ ” he said. “I am sure those are the thoughts conjured up in the hearts and minds of the thousands of innocent civilians caught up in this (Yugoslav) quagmire.”

But not all survivors of the Holocaust agree with the comparison. Some, like Rene Firestone, who was raised in World War II Czechoslovakia and imprisoned at Auschwitz, say that Nazi Germany’s systematic plan to root out and destroy the total Jewish population was in a category entirely different from the conflict in Bosnia or the other Yugoslav republics.

“In no way would I minimize any human suffering, wherever it occurs, but to compare the situation in Yugoslavia to the Holocaust is almost ridiculous,” said Firestone, now a Beverly Hills fashion designer.

“I really don’t believe that we would stop it by bombing anything or imposing more violence on that region,” she said. “The United Nations must find a way to force the politicians to sit down and talk to each other, to negotiate.”

Reminded that the United Nations already is trying to do that, in talks now going on in the same building in Geneva where the League of Nations tried to find a peaceful way to stop Nazi aggression, Firestone said, “I have no idea what would force those politicians to stop.”

Hyman Bookbinder, a veteran Washington representative of the American Jewish Committee, said: “Some people among the survivors have been so traumatized they can’t believe that there is any other tragedy in the world that merits the term ‘Holocaust.’ I myself don’t agree with that, but I understand their feelings.”

Bookbinder, an American conscientious objector during the early phases of World War II, said he eventually came to believe that sometimes war is just after he learned of the extent of Nazi atrocities.

“By far my greatest mistake is that I continued to say the U.S. should stay out of the war long beyond when I should have,” he wrote in a recent autobiography.

Bookbinder said that he supports more forceful intervention in Bosnia, and last week he joined the Jewish community’s first major protest of the U.S. inaction, when 19 major organizations sent a letter to President Bush and to the Clinton transition team expressing their concerns.

“This time no one can question whether genocide is going on. . . . If the world is silent, in some respects it will be an even greater crime of humanity,” Bookbinder said.

For Holocaust survivors, some of the memories cut two ways. Most agree that Serbia and its ethnic Bosnian and Croatian Serb allies are guilty of by far the largest number of the outrages. But others recall that during World War II, the Serbs were fellow victims of Nazi atrocities while a puppet government in Croatia collaborated with the occupiers.

Leila Gerson, who was 17 when her family was trapped in a World War II labor camp in southern Croatia, said that Croatian atrocities have scarred her memories for the rest of her life. She now finds it unbearable to side with the Croats in their conflict against the Serbs.

“At the beginning I was very much on the Serbian side,” said Gerson, now of Hollywood Hills. “If I ever suffered in my life, it was due to (the Croats).”

She said reports about Serbian atrocities have only partly turned her against her memories: “In my mind, yes, I am condemning the Serbs . . . but my heart is always on their side.”

Lew Kowarski of Pasadena, Md., who fought in the Soviet army against the Nazis, is even less swayed by recent events: “I’m all for the Serbs. I remember when they were the only ones who opposed Hitler and Stalin. . . . They were very brave people.”